


Just another promise you couldn't keep

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [303]
Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29434941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: Blaine and Leo's (quite fast) descent into pain and heartbreak after Dublin.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Leoverse [303]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541





	Just another promise you couldn't keep

**Author's Note:**

> Esploratori del Polyverso (Chapter 2, Mission 3)  
> prompt: Alejandro, by Lady Gaga. You're not alone, by Mads Langer. Love the way you lie, by Eminem feat. Rihanna

You know that I love you boy  
Hot like Mexico, rejoice  
At this point I've gotta choose  
Nothing to lose  
\- Alejandro, Lady Gaga

Leo can't say he saw much of Dublin. They arrived three days ago but they've spent most of the time in their room at the Merrion as they always do when they arrive in a new place. This is supposed to be the last stop before they go back home, so he's not happy to begin with, but he could have come to enjoy at least some part of this visit. Now, though, he knows for sure that he's never going to see this place. That his experience of Ireland will be briefly lived and will die in this room.

Whenever Leo is sad because they're about to resume their separate lives after spending time together, Blaine can't stand it. And so they fight. Even though it is not really fighting if Leo asks him to sit down and talk this over and Blaine refuses to do so on the account that Leo is too young, it is too soon, why is this not enough for him? Why can't Leo just enjoy what he has and stop asking for more and more and more?

They have had this conversation so many times that Blaine is almost right, it is starting to get boring.

Except that it is not, it just hurts like hell. But only Leo, apparently.

Leo tries really hard not to cry, not to scream, not to get insanely angry to show Blaine that he really has grown up, that he's not a fifteen years old kid anymore. He loves him and he wants to try to be together for real. He's ready, he wants this. But it is like clashing against a wall again and again and again.

Blaine is a very complex man, but Leo has been with him long enough to know every side of him, every change in his mood, even the thoughts that have yet to cross his face. He has listened to him talking so many times – hanging from his lips – that he's almost always able to foresee what he's going to say down to the last word by just looking a him. Not this time, though.

Leo is bracing for something bad and what he gets is worse.

“I cannot fucking believe what you're asking me to do! To accept taking you into a life which is not yours, which you don't have and should not have any responsibility of! Live your fucking life and be grateful!”

“Of what?” Leo snaps at that point, but his voice lacks the intensity of anger. He already gave up in a way. Those words were the last nail in their coffin. “Of having you just in the few scraps of your time you manages to spare? I'm the last one in the order of you priorities, so I should just shut up and be grateful that at least I'm one.”

And he sees Blaine's face changing and getting paler. His voice gets sweeter. And maybe he could just say something to make it better, something to push the conversation a little further down, something that would make Leo reconsider.

But his phone rings and his kid is crying on the other end.

So Blaine chooses, and it's not Leo.

It is the distance that makes life a little hard  
Two minds that once were close; now so many miles apart  
\- You're not alone, Mads Langer

Blaine read somewhere that you need strength to love someone with all your heart, but you need even more to break up with someone you love when you know it is the right thing to do.

Or maybe he didn't read it. It was one of those inconsistent starlets on TV, there one day and gone the next forty-eight hours, that said it from the couch of a morning talk show. It sounded unusually intelligent coming from the devil box. Somehow the sentence stuck with him.

He agrees with it, of course, even if he didn't make the conscious choice of ending things with Leo in Dublin. They fought, he said the wrong words, Leo decided to take them in the worst possible way and Blaine _let it happen_. And when he saw Leo marching out the hotel room without looking back once, he knew it was going to be over if he didn't stop the kid.

So he didn't, because that was the right thing to do and it was better to take that chance now than chicken out later, as he was sure he was going to do over and over until it was going to be too late.

He broke up with him and it took a lot of strength, but no more than it's taking now to prevent himself from grabbing the phone and call him. Blaine knows that certain words would do the trick. Leo would be pissed – probably more than usual – but he would give in with the right push. He knows the kid like the back of his hand and he can predict his every reaction because, as much as it wasn't intentional, Blaine wired him a certain way.

And that is exactly why he should put the phone down.

Either he wants it or not, he's got too much power over the kid – it was true when Leo was fifteen and it's even truer now that Leo is twenty and he convinced himself that all he can see is Blaine – so Leo would never consider the situation, he would just say _yes_ after hearing Blaine's _Can I see you?_. And God, Blaine wants to see him so much that it hurts, but he won't do that to him. He won't call when he still can't give Leo what he wants just because he can't deal with his own longing.

Blaine is aware of that, he didn't lose sight of what is right and what is wrong.

Despite that, his finger lingers on the _call_ button.

He only stops because the phone starts ringing before he could call. For a fraction of a second – the time it takes him to read the name on the screen – he hopes against all hopes that it is Leo, but it's not.

It's Kurt, saying Leo will be okay now that he set him free, to give him time to recover, to leave him alone.

Never to talk to him again.

It'd take strength to just hang up.

It takes more to say _I won't_.

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn  
Well that's alright, because I like the way it hurts  
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry  
Well that's alright, because I love the way you lie  
I love the way you lie  
Love the way you lie - Eminem feat. Rihanna

When Dr. Williams calls him saying Leo needs him, Blaine doesn't know what to expect. 

The woman is vague over the phone and gives him only some basic information – her name, the way she got his number, the reason why she felt the need to call him – never really touching the core of the problem as if she was afraid to scare him away.

Blaine learns soon enough that Dr. Williams is not afraid of anything or anyone, especially not of telling him how much damage he did. She's not confrontational and she doesn't guilt trip him as Kurt did the moment he knew this was going to happen, but she states facts plain and simple, she doesn't sugarcoat even the ugliest parts, and so he can't deny that what she says is true.

She's blunt, but she's also hopeful and, most importantly, she gives him something to do. A task. A purpose. A way to try and fix things, which is way more than he gave himself in the past year. She tells him he's going to fail several times before he can even start to succeed. He must not give up.

Dr. Williams tells him to be prepared because whatever he thinks is going on with Leo, it's worse. He asks her to explain to him how Leo is dealing with the situation and she just says “He doesn't.” She says he's extremely angry at everyone, that he's wary, aggressive, mischievous, and hurtful.

“And he's mean,” Dr. Williams says. “Be prepared for that too, Mr. Anderson.”

Blaine braced himself for impact, but she was right.

He was not prepared for harsh reality and he highly doubts he could have ever been. He remembered a beautiful, strong young man, but what's in front of him is just a faint shadow of the Leo in his mind. The kid is so skinny that he looks sick and his arms are scrawny as if he had lost too much weight too suddenly. He looks tired and haunted.

And beyond all that, lost.

Blaine's first reaction is always to get closer. There was nothing he couldn't fix by hugging him tight back then, but it's the wrong choice – the first of many – because Leo snarls and backs off like a cornered animal. “Don't touch me!”

Blaine's taken aback by words he never heard coming out from Leo's mouth. The kid is angry, he tells himself, and he's scared. You need to be patient. This is going to be the rest of his life – being patient, being supporting, painstakingly slowly putting back together what he shattered in a million pieces – but he doesn't know that now.

Now it's just a moment.

Except that he's been here three weeks and, instead of getting better, Leo is turning even more feral. He hates the house Blaine bought for them to live in during his recovery, he hates his room, he hates Timmy, and most of all he hates him with such ferocity that Blaine does not know how to deal with it. He takes it in silence, lets Leo lash out at him as hard as he wants, but it's breaking him, day after day. It's devastating.

He doesn't dare take another step forward. He knows with absolute certainty that he can't take another cruel answer – and yet he will, a million more actually, but once again he doesn't know. “Leo, I'm just trying to help,” he says, and he can feel the tiredness in his voice weigh down his words. “I want you to feel better.”

“Nobody asked you to come.”

“But I'm here!” It's frustrating to have to repeat the same things over and over and over, knowing that either he doesn't believe them or they don't touch him at all.

“Why? For how long?” This time Leo screams so hard that his voice comes out raw and breaks. Blaine can see the rage in the way his whole body tenses against him instead of towards him. “Did you need a little pet project? Something to fix so you could go back to your _fancy adult life_ and feel better with yourself? When is your flight back?”

“I told you, I don't have a flight back,” Blaine sighs. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“For now,” He swallows and Blaine can see an echo of his Leo in this stranger in front of him. He can see the same desperation, the same panic in his eyes. “But you will leave, because that is what you fucking do every time!”

“Not this time!” Blaine raises his voice and then he regrets it when he sees him flinching. “Not this time, I swear. I'll stay until you get better,” he says softly.

And it must be the wrongest thing of all – and he doesn't know why, God, he doesn't fucking know – because Leo glares at him with such hate in his eyes that Blaine can almost feel it on his skin. “You're a fucking asshole,” Leo hisses, pushing himself away from the wall.

Blaine would like to stop him, but he can't find it in himself to get close to him. He can only watch him leave the house once again, wondering if he will come back this time.


End file.
